background
- Journalist since 1992. I’ve won awards!
- Copy editor since 2000: making text read smoothly while adding witty (or SEO-friendly) headings.
- A veteran freelancer who’s worked for Marketing Week, CNBC Business, The Lawyer, Funds Europe, the Financial Times’ Investment Adviser and numerous B2B magazines.
philosophy
- Keep it simple. Plain, succinct English brings business concepts alive.
- I learned this at the coalface, writing for CNBC Business.
- I was the magazine’s copy editor too, so I had to convert foreign journalists’ stories into lively, colloquial English. A useful skill to have!
achievements
- I was features editor of London’s Highbury & Islington Express, spinoff of the world’s poshest local paper, the Hampstead & Highgate Express (Ham & High). In fact, I interviewed Ryan Gosling before he was famous…
- My 2018 book George Orwell on Screen was a Times Literary Supplement pick of the year. It’s in Harvard and Yale’s libraries. Plus, I’m a talking head on Criterion’s DVD/Blu-ray of 1984.
"David Ryan is an extremely good-natured and hard working professional journalist. He was always helpful and polite to work with when I was editor of Tatler."
geordie greig
Editor, Daily Mail